Part 29 (2/2)

”Hold on!” broke in Maclay. ”I'm not calling you up for that. I'm calling up on business; rotten unpleasant business, too.”

”What's wrong?” asked the Master.

”I'm hoping t.i.tus Romaine is,” said the Justice. ”He's just been here--with his North Prussian hired man as witness--to make a complaint about your dog, Lad. Yes, and to get a court order to have the old fellow shot, too.”

”What!” sputtered the Master. ”He hasn't actually----”

”That's just what he's done,” said Maclay. ”He claims Lad killed four of his new sheep night before last, and four more of them this morning or last night. Schwartz swears he caught Lad at the last of the killed sheep both times. It's hard luck, old man, and I feel as bad about it as if it were my own dog. You know how strong I am for Lad. He's the greatest collie I've known, but the law is clear in such----”

”You speak as if you thought Lad was guilty!” flamed the Master. ”You ought to know better than that. He----”

”Schwartz tells a straight story,” answered Maclay, sadly, ”and he tells it under oath. He swears he recognized Lad first time. He says he volunteered to watch in the barnyard last night. He had had a hard day's work and he fell asleep while he was on watch. He says he woke up in gray dawn to find the whole flock in a turmoil, and Lad pinning one of the sheep to the ground. He had already killed three. Schwartz drove him away. Three of the sheep were missing. One Lad had just downed was dying. Romaine swears he saw Lad 'running' his sheep last week. It----”

”What did you do about the case?” asked the dazed Master.

”I told them to be at the courtroom at three this afternoon with the bodies of the two dead sheep that aren't missing, and that I'd notify you to be there, too.”

”Oh, I'll be there!” snapped the Master. ”Don't worry. And it was decent of you to make them wait. The whole thing is ridiculous!

It----”

”Of course,” went on Maclay, ”either side can easily appeal from any decision I make. That is as regards damages. But, by the towns.h.i.+p's new sheep-laws, I'm sorry to say there isn't any appeal from the local Justice's decree that a sheep-killing dog must be shot at once. The law leaves me no option if I consider a dog guilty of sheep-killing.

I have to order such a dog put to death at once. That's what's making me so blue. I'd rather lose a year's pay than have to order old Lad killed.”

”You won't have to,” declared the Master, stoutly; albeit he was beginning to feel a nasty sinking in the vicinity of his stomach.

”We'll manage to prove him innocent. I'll stake anything you like on that.”

”Talk the case over with d.i.c.k Colfax or any other good lawyer before three o'clock,” suggested Maclay. ”There may be a legal loophole out of the muddle. I hope to the Lord there is.”

”We're not going to crawl out through any 'loopholes,' Lad and I,”

returned the Master. ”We're going to come through, _clean_. See if we don't!”

Leaving the telephone, he went in search of the Mistress, and more and more disheartened told her the story.

”The worst of it is,” he finished, ”Romaine and Schwartz seem to have made Maclay believe their fool yarn.”

”That is because they believe it, themselves,” said the Mistress, ”and because, just as soon as even the most sensible man is made a Judge, he seems to lose all his common sense and intuition and become nothing but a walking statute-book. But you--you think for a moment, do you, that they can persuade Judge Maclay to have Lad shot?”

She spoke with a little quiver in her sweet voice that roused all the Master's fighting spirit.

”This Place is going to be in a state of siege against the entire law and militia of New Jersey,” he announced, ”before one bullet goes into Lad. You can put your mind to rest on that. But that isn't enough. I want to _clear_ him. In these days of 'conservation' and scarcity, it is a grave offense to destroy any meat-animal. And the loss of eight sheep in two days--in a district where there has been such an effort made to revive sheep raising----”

”Didn't you say they claim the second lot of sheep were killed in the night and at dawn, just as they said the first were?” interposed the Mistress.

”Why, yes. But----”

”Then,” said the Mistress, much more comfortably, ”we can prove Lad's alibi just as I said yesterday we could. Marie always lets him out in the morning when she comes downstairs to dust these lower rooms. She's never down before six o'clock; and the sun, nowadays, rises long before that. Schwartz says he saw Lad both times in the early dawn. We can prove, by Marie, that Lad was safe here in the house till long after sunrise.”

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